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Scrooge turns into grumpy Yorkshire farmer for Badapple Theatre Company’s take on A Christmas Carol on tour from tomorrow

Grumpy farmer? In Yorkshire? Meet James Lewis-Knight’s Farmer Scrooge in Badapple Theatre Company’s Farmer Scrooge’s Christmas Carol. Picture: Karl Andre

GREEN Hammerton company Badapple Theatre set off on their winter travels tomorrow with Farmer Scrooge’s Christmas Carol, starring York actors James Lewis-Knight and Emily Chattle.

Billed as “classic Badapple: Dickens with a Yorkshire twist, puppets, songs and music by Jez Lowe and all the jokes we can handle at this time of year,” writer-director Kate Bramley’s new family show will play across Yorkshire as well as Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Worcestershire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, Northumberland, Cumbria, County Durham and Oxfordshire.

Starting out at Tockwith Village Hall, near York, tomorrow at 7pm, Badapple’s tour van will take in 22 performances between December 1 and 30 as Bramley’s itinerant band of actors heads to venues on their Yorkshire doorstep and beyond with her comedy slant on Charles Dickens’s 180-year-old story, now set in and around Scrooge’s farm and bedroom in 1959.

“Have a good chuckle while the blustering, skin-flint farmer Ebeneezer Scrooge gets his comeuppance and is forced to see the error of his penny-pinching ways,” says Kate of a production that marks Badapple’s 25th anniversary of touring.

James will play Fred, Scrooge, Shep and Elvis, yes, Elvis; Emily’s multi-role playing will stretch to Ginger, Bert the feed man, Mrs Cratchitt, Niece (Josie), Marley, Belle, Mrs Feziweg, Mr Feziweg, assorted Cratchitts, Undertaker, Mrs Dilbert and Girl. (Please note, name spelling may diversify from other versions, whether Cratchit or Fezziwig).

Emily Chattle with the puppet of Mr Fezziwig in Badapple Theatre Company’s Farmer Scrooge’s Christmas Carol. Picture: Karl Andre

“Full of local stories and carols, puppets and mayhem, and original songs by Sony Award-winner Jez Lowe, plus a whacking great dose of seasonal bonhomie, this is a winter warmer to put a smile on everyone’s face this Christmas.”

Don’t take only Kate’s word for it. Clare Granger, High Sheriff of North Yorkshire, is a Badapple devotee. “It’s wonderful to spend a joyous evening with Badapple Theatre Company in a small rural village hall,” she says. “Kate Bramley is absolutely fulfilling her ambition to bring the arts into the community and the uplifting effect on the audience of what the theatre company does is palpable.”

Badapple’s mission is to venture out to the smallest and hardest-to-reach village halls and community venues to bring professional theatre to all. “We all know that isolation and loneliness are major issues in our rural communities and that maintaining good mental health is proving more and more of a challenge for the general population,” says the High Sheriff.

“It is hard to overestimate the positive benefits of getting out of the house and attending a joyful, inexpensive, communal event in your own locality. Badapple Theatre Company is providing just this experience.”

This year, James has appeared in York company Next Door But One’s tour of Operation Hummingbird, Matthew Harper-Hardcastle’s “humorous and uplifting exploration of grief, loss and noticing just how far you’ve come”, while Emily did the milk rounds in Badapple’s tour of Eddie And The Gold Tops, Bramley’s comedy of a milkman turning into the cream of Sixties pop stars.

James Lewis-Knight and Emily Chattle in a scene from BadappleTheatre Company’s Farmer Scrooge’s Christmas Carol. Picture: Karl Andre

Farmer Scrooge’s Christmas Carol: Yorkshire dates

December 1: Tockwith Village Hall, 7pm. Box office: 01423 331304

December 2: Harpham & Lowthorpe Village Hall YO25 4QZ, 7.30pm. Box office:  07867 692616.

December 3: The Old Girls’ School, Sherburn in Elmet, LS25 6BL, 7pm. Box office:  01977 685178.

December 13: Bishop Monkton Village Hall, near Harrogate, HG3 3QG, 7.30pm. Box office: 01423 331304.

December 19: Green Hammerton Village Hall, near York, YO26 8AB, 7pm. Box office: 01423 331304.

December 20: Burton Fleming Village Hall, East Yorkshire, YO25 3LL, 6.30pm. Box

December 27: Sutton under Whitestonecliffe Village Hall, Hambleton, YO7 2PS, 4.30pm. Box office: 01423 331304.

December 29: East Cottingwith Village Hall, near York, YO42 2TL, 4pm. Box office:  07866 024009 or 07973 699145.

Emily Chattle with one of the puppets designed by Sam Edwards for Badapple’s Farmer Scrooge’s Christmas Carol. Picture: Karl Andre
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Late Music celebrates the work of Anthony Gilbert and York composer Janet Owen Thomas in Saturday night concert

The late York composer Janet Owen Thomas, remembered in Anthony Gilbert’s work Monsoon Toccata

ANTHONY Gilbert’s Monsoon Toccata: In Memoriam Janet Owen Thomas (1961-2002) will be performed by pianist Kate Ledger at Saturday night’s Late Music concert in York.

“This concert will be a celebration of composer Anthony Gilbert who died in July this year, aged 89,” says Late Music administrator Steve Crowther. “The programme includes his memorial piece written for Janet Owen Thomas, the York composer, who died tragically young.”

Performed by violinist Nina Kumin, clarinet player Jonathan Sage and pianist Ledger at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, the 7.30pm programme features three more Gilbert works, plus music by Nicola LeFanu and David Lumsdaine, who both knew him well.

Here Steve Crowther pays tribute to Jane Owen Thomas and her contribution to York Late Music.

“I never met Janet, even though she lived near me in Holgate, York. I did speak with her on the phone however, inviting Janet to compose a short piece for a small ensemble,” he recalls.

“It was the early days of Late Music and I worked with director David Power. It was then called the Late Music Festival with a strapline: The Cutting Edge, and the following year, The Cutting Edge Gets Sharper.

“The concerts were a niche market, and quite often the niche didn’t bother turning up. Low audiences with marginal box office revenue did not appeal to grant-funding bodies and so there was, as Kwasi Kwarteng discovered many years later, little in the way of inward investment.

“So we decided to change our marketing strategy, or rather, develop one. Living Composers, performed Live. This really sounded unique and, apart from the Go West Festival in Wales, it was.

Nina Kumin, left, Jonathan Sage and Kate Ledger: Playing Anthony Gilbert works at Saturday night’s Late Music concert at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York

“The main issue here was that quite a few of the living composers we programmed were no longer with us after we had gone to print. We then went nuts and threw the kitchen sink at the programming.

“The concerts now included jazz, Indian music, gamelan, crossover, loads of fusions; we even dug up Beethoven. Anyway, this long and winding road led us to where we are today. So back to Janet.

“OK, so this next bit isn’t going to sound professional or cool; not that I have ever been professional or cool. Janet said she would be interested and then caught me off guard with: ‘What will the commission fee be?’ I started laughing and said: ‘you’re kidding?’. She wasn’t.

“I have often thought Late Music should host a memorial concert of Janet’s music. And we will. I thought this programme note written by Anthony Gilbert – for a short piano piece called Monsoon Toccata, was very touching, very moving. It feels so right and so fitting to include this in Anthony’s own Late Music memorial concert.”

Anthony Gilbert wrote: “In 1988, Janet Owen Thomas met up with me in Sydney at the end of a short organ recital tour – possibly her last before devoting herself entirely to composing.

“We returned to England together, doing a rapid circular tour of Northern India on the way. Alighting from the plane at Delhi, we were hit by the whirling wind and torrential rain of the seasonal monsoon, and early the following morning there was also a minor earthquake.

“This experience determined the spirit of the music, and Northern Indian Raga determines the purely technical approach, with the quasi-improvisatory toccata-like textures acting as decoration to a slow-moving, widely spaced modal top line, which almost loses control of the overall shape at the mid-point – a reflection of the impact of those natural phenomena.”

Janet Owen Thomas, composer, writer, teacher and organist: the back story, from British Music Collection

Born: Merseyside, to Welsh and German parents.

Education: Merchant Taylors’ Girls’ School, Liverpool; read music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, taught by Jane Glover and Robert Saxton (composition).

Further studies: After premiere of her choral  work New And Better Days, commissioned to mark the opening of Liverpool’s Tate Gallery, read for degree in Music Technology at University of York, then took advanced composition studies with Anthony Gilbert at Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.

Works included: UK premiere of Rosaces at 1991 BBC Proms (youngest composer featured that year). Concerto Grosso Cantus for Bang-on-a-Can, 1992, performed in Goldberg Ensemble’s Contemporary series at RNCM, broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Under The Skin, BBC commission for 1999 Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music. Preludes for Piano, premiered in London in 2000.

Commissioned or performed by: BBC; Goldberg Ensemble; Park Lane Group; Allegri and Bingham Quartets; Gemini; Boccherini String Trio; Stephen De Pledge; Mary Wiegold; Lontano; Kevin Bowyer; the Option Band and others.

Lived and worked in: York, dividing her time between teaching, writing and composition.

York composer Nicola LeFanu


IN her obituary for Janet Owen Thomas, fellow York composer Nicola LeFanu wrote of her musical style: “The hallmark of her style is linear counterpoint; the music is carefully constructed to allow for self-similarity in its proportions, both in the large and in the detail.

“In speaking of her work, Thomas acknowledged the influence of the 17th and 18th-century music which she played so much in her days as an organist. Her contrapuntal textures are transformed, though, by the ‘shimmer and glitter’ which she loved.”

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REVIEW: NE Theatre York in A Christmas Carol, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York ***

Chain reaction: Steve Tearle’s Jacob Marley spooks Kit Stroud’s Ebenezer Scrooge in NE Theatre York’s A Christmas Carol

NE Theatre York – or NE Musicals York as they were back then – staged the York premiere of this all-singing version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the JoRo in November 2018.

More Christmas advert season than Advent season on that occasion, but the show’s return heralds Advent’s arrival on Sunday, and the festive mood is already alive and noisy, like the crisp and sweet packet scrunching that accompanied Tuesday’s opening night.

Scrooge moan over, some things have changed since 2018, some have not. More on the changes later, but first: the cast numbers 60 once more; Steve Tearle is directing and playing the ghost of Jacob Marley in white suit and face paint again, and the Sold Out signs will be greeting theatregoers again and again on the street scene on the JoRo forecourt. No tickets left, not one.

A roll of thunder announces the arrival of Tearle’s Marley on a London set familiar to audiences who saw his production of Oliver!. Temporarily, north easterner Steve turns Brummie to make the obligatory mobile phone pronouncement but with the impish humour that will mark a frenetic, fantastical, phantasmagorical production into which he will throw everything, magical books, bouncing balls and kitchen sink included (metaphorically speaking).

Perri Ann Barley’s Ghost of Christmas Past

Look out too for the misbehaving chairs and bed in Scrooge’s house, leaping into the air as if propelled by the handiwork of ghosts.

Written by Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid composer Alan Menken, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and book by Mike Ockrent and Lynn Ahrens, the musical began life as a film before being re-created for the Broadway stage, opening at Madison Square Garden.

Its driving force is the modern musical score under Scott Phillips’s enthusiastic direction,  but the dialogue fizzes along too – everything is home and hosed by 9.30pm – with Tearle’s Marley as host, ghost and timekeeper.

Changes afoot? The familiar tale of miserable, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge’s redemptive journey through Christmas Eve night still takes the form of encounters with Ghosts of the Past, Present and Yet To Be but Tearle has fortified the circus setting first evoked in 2018, while Melissa Boyd’s choreography nods to both 1856 and modern moves for ensemble numbers.

Once more the ghosts are first seen in their real-world guises as a lamplighter (Perri Ann Barley), Ring Master (Chris Hagyard, taking the circus theme further than James O’Neil’s charity show barker of 2018), and an Old Hag (John Mulholland). Note their Christmas colours of snow white, ivy green and holly berry red.

Chris Hagyard’s Ghost of Christmas Present

Tearle loves theatricality, spectacle in particular, and here he quite surpasses himself by having Marley wreathed in 100 metres of white fabric, stretched like waves across the stage as he urges Kit Stroud’s grouchy Scrooge to learn the error of his ways before it is too late. Marley’s trademark chains are more like a rapper’s bling adornments by comparison.

Graduating from his 2018 role as Young Ebenezer, Stroud’s Scrooge is mean of voice and demeanour at the outset, his lead performance being alive to both the humour and inhumanity the part demands.

Shocked by what he learns of himself, his Scrooge is pained by the recollections of his younger self, when guided by Perri Ann Barley’s Ghost Of Christmas Past with her coat of lights leading the way.

Ockrent and Ahrens’s book weaves one departure from Dickens’s novella into the plot: the story of Scrooge’s father, John William Scrooge, being sentenced to a debtors’ prison while his horrified wife’s family look on as they sing God Bless Us, Everyone.

Cowering into a ball, Stroud’s Scrooge screams “Mother” (as played by Rebecca Jackson), the stuff of a psychological thriller to counter the pantomimic comedy mayhem that subsequently permeates Mr Fezziwig’s Annual Christmas Ball.

John Mulholland’s Ghost of Christmas Yet To Be

Hagyard, out of luck in October when Bev Jones Company’s Guys And Dolls had to be called off, puts that frustration behind him in a terrific performance,  pulling strings as Ring Master cum Ghost of Christmas Present.

Greg Roberts’s clown-wigged Mr Fezziwig and Ali Butler-Hind’s Mrs Fezziwig enjoy themselves too in that first-half climax, while Kristian Barley’s Bob Cratchit and Alice Atang’s Tiny Tim maximise their moments too.

Mulholland’s Ghost of Christmas Yet To Be transforms from Old Hag to flame-maned heavy metal frontman, the shock of the new steering Stroud’s alarmed Scrooge towards the dawn of realisation and change.

Visually arresting, largely playful rather than psychological, A Christmas Carol is a typically vibrant, helter-skelter Tearle production, where the singing and musicianship is of varied quality, the dancing and acting being more assured by comparison.

NE Theatre York in A Christmas Carol, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday; 7.30pm nightly and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. SOLD OUT. Box office for returns only: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

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REVIEW: Steve Crowther’s verdict on University of York Symphony Orchestra, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, November 25

John Stringer conducting the University of York Symphony Orchestra on November 25

THE first thing to say about this ambitious concert was that it was played to a packed auditorium. In these difficult times this is no small achievement and great credit to the University Symphony Orchestra and conductor John Stringer, who have deservedly generated such a trusted following.

I have never heard Kaija Saariaho’s Lumière et Pesanteur in a live performance. To be honest I found listening to the work slightly unsettling. It was like swimming submerged in a spooky, murky musical lagoon.

The very effective soundscape was made from light, translucent chords. A delicate motif moved from trumpet to flute. There emerged loud tutti, trumpet and brass but these outbursts were always sucked back into the murky depths. As I said, unsettling.

Not all the exposed playing was always on the money, a little pitch unsure, perhaps lacking a little match practice. But there was no doubting the originality of the score and the performance caught the atmospheric sound world to good effect.

And so, from one Finnish great to an even greater one, Jean Sibelius. En Saga is also a powerful, descriptive tone poem. The work opens with a mysterious, distinctive mood or sheen created by glistening string playing. Again, the solo and exposed instrumental groupings seemed to lack authority and confidence.

This changed with the dramatic increase in tempo and the playing was more self-assured and enjoyable. The work is now brimming with instrumental folk-inspired dances, heroic calls on the horn. The climax of the four horns playing their notes chiuso (muted by hand), produced a particularly metallic, brassy effect.

Following some strong viola solo playing (Anna Thompson), conductor John Stringer drove the players on to a sustained orchestral climax dominated by brass fanfares. Very effective. This couldn’t last and a splendid Pip Tall on clarinet guided us toward a poignant, tranquil close.

If some of the playing in the first half seemed, I suspect, a little under rehearsed, this was certainly not the case in the second half with a terrific performance of Shostakovich’s symphonic last will and musical testament, the exceptional Symphony No. 15.

Whereas his symphonies are usually driven by external events and politics, here the drama is very much internalised. To be sure, there is fun to be had, not least in the William Tell quotations. Or is there?

The symphony, the mightiest of abstract musical forms, opens with a solo glockenspiel. It is certainly a surprise and, in this context, a dramatic one. This is followed by a seemingly carefree chirpy flute solo and then a slightly odd bassoon melody, some strange, slightly displaced string passages, familiar rhythmic echoes in the brass and then an even stranger hello from the trumpets quoting from Rossini’s William Tell overture.

The playing convincingly recreated a kind of black musical playground, or possibly fairground, where the appearance of Petrushka’s ghost wouldn’t have been that far-fetched. But if this quirky, surreal quality suggesting frivolity is a musical joke, the punchline is manifest in the darkest recesses of the following slow movement.

The University Symphony Orchestra delivered a persuasive, bleak account. It opens with a noble brass chorale ushering in a truly heartfelt cello solo; a pair of solo flutes (nicely played by Persephone Alloway and Immy McPhun) introduce the historical dotted funeral motif, with a solo trombone taking us to loud fortissimo climax.

Fine bassoon playing leads to the start of the Allegretto third movement. I think that this is meant to be played without a break, but anyhow, mercifully there was one, and I needed it. Having said that, this scherzando offers little respite as the chilling woodblock motif introduces a solo double bass theme accompanied by confident celesta playing by Joel Edmondson.

A macabre clarinet solo takes to a unsettling violin solo arriving at the movement’s closing Desolation Row. The final Adagio is brimming with quotations: the fate motif from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nieberlung and Tristan und Isolde. There are echoes of Glinka’s Do Not Tempt Me Needlessly. It is left to the celesta to take us to the final curtain restating the symphony’s opening motif.

To quote music journalist Tom Service: “The final sounds of Shostakovich’s symphonic canon are impassive, intimate, and empty. They’re among the most spine-tingling and chilling sounds in orchestral music.”

John Stringer and the University Symphony Orchestra delivered an emotional rollercoaster of the bleakest of musical journeys. They, and especially their fine soloists – Persephone Alloway (flute), Isaac McAreavey (bassoon), Mari McGregor (cello), Sam Banks (trombone), George Roberts (double bass) and Vlad Turapov (violin) – should be very proud.

Review by Steve Crowther

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on London Bridge Trio, British Music Society of York

London Bridge Trio: violinist Ben Hancox, pianist Daniel Tong and cellist Cara Berridge

British Music Society of York: London Bridge Trio, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, November 10

IT came as a surprise to find that the London Bridge Trio, renowned for its championing of English composers, is already into its third decade.

Its appearance for the British Music Society of York contained no English music, but a tasty combination of early Beethoven and late Fauré, with Schumann’s First Piano Trio for finale.

Beethoven’s first three trios – his first official opus – were his calling card as he summoned up the courage to journey to Vienna from his birthplace in Bonn at the age of 21. They did the trick and opened many doors for him.

Op 1 No 2 in D, full of variety, speaks of an imagination off the leash for the first time. There was at once clarity and spaciousness in the ensemble’s approach, a feel for the structure without obvious signposting.

The slow movement was measured, as the trio relished its improvisatory structure, while the scherzo with its offbeat accents made a lively contrast, calmed down only in its closing six-bar calando (simultaneous decrease in sound and speed). The mood of suppressed excitement in the finale burst into the open in the closing bars.

Fauré’s only piano trio, by contrast, was the work of a 78-year-old. Its ebb and flow was remarkably cogent here, as the ensemble – launched by the cello’s theme – sustained a steady momentum throughout the opening allegro.

The slow movement was meditative, its tempo leisurely, but eventually generating warmth from the central bleakness. The finale was the antithesis of this, using its syncopation and cross accents to build excitement.

Schumann’s Op 63 in D minor, the same key as the Fauré, got off to a boisterous start, with its dotted main motif especially forceful. Its jack-in-the-box scherzo was scarcely less emphatic, bursting with surprises, although the trio was a good deal smoother.

The elegiac violin opening to the slow movement, picked up by the cello, was gently touching. But its moodiness was at once dispelled by the sunshine of the finale, now in the major key, and the final acceleration was exhilarating.

The London Bridge is a well-balanced ensemble, its pianist Daniel Tong never dominating. It was a privilege to share its many insights.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on North York Moors Chamber Music Series at All Saints’ Church, Helmsley, November 25

Violinist Charlotte Scott

MENTION the names Charlotte, Daniel, Jamie and Katya to any regular punter at the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival and they will instantly know who you mean.

For the uninitiated, this is a reference to violinist Charlotte Scott, pianist Daniel Lebhardt, cellist Jamie Walton and pianist Katya Apekisheva. All are core members of the resident team during the summer festival – so I shall use their first names here.

It was a special pleasure to welcome them back to our area as winter closes in, incidentally reminding us of treasures in store next summer (specifically, August11 to 24 2014). Here we enjoyed sonatas by Strauss and Rachmaninov, alongside bonbons by the latter and by Schubert.

Pianist Daniel Lebhardt

Schubert’s Adagio in E flat, D.897 (known by its publisher’s title, Notturno) is a touching piano trio. It begins pianissimo and is – rarely for Schubert – marked appassionato. With the benefit of hindsight, we can feel the nostalgia of a piece written during his 32nd and final year.

Here it was beautifully controlled, with Katya’s rippling piano a constant underlay and the dotted figure in its opening phrase still prominent in its brief chorale.

Rachmaninov stood at the heart of the evening. His Cello Sonata in G minor, a work of his late twenties and the last chamber music he was to write, brought a much-deserved spotlight on Jamie, with Katya still in support (although the actual spotlights flickered distractingly).

Cellist Jamie Walton. Picture: Matthew Johnson

Its first three movements showed varying degrees of agitation here. The opening grew in intensity, right up to its fiery conclusion. Scherzo and trio were neatly contrasted, the one nervy and staccato, the other smoothly melodious.

The slow movement teetered on the brink of sentimentality – but never crossed that line. The finale was quite different. Now in the major key, it reached unexpectedly sunny uplands, delivered with immense conviction right through to its furiously happy coda.

Rachmaninov’s Trio élégiaque in D minor (1893) dates from his late teens but took another two decades to reach its final form. It sounds much like Brahms. Its themes emerged clearly from Daniel’s piano, although Charlotte’s violin needed to resort to some muscularity to match his enthusiasm. Jamie’s cello remained firm and the ending was properly solemn.

Pianist Katya Apekisheva

Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata is another early work, dating from his early twenties, with all the exuberance that implies. Daniel’s passionate piano moved a little too readily directly from piano to forte, with little between. Charlotte not merely withstood the challenge but soared sumptuously in both the outer movements.

The Andante between, marked ‘Improvisation’, was a different matter: an absolute gem. Its song-like melody elicited exceptionally sweet tone from Charlotte, with Daniel nobly self-effacing, and reached a rare ‘pin-drop’ moment at its close, the audience completely transfixed. It crystallised an evening of exceptional warmth – just what the doctor ordered, in fact.

Review by Martin Dreyer

* Next summer’s programme details are available at www.northyorkmoorsfestival.com.

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Hooray for the Hollywood Sisters as they raise funds for York Mind at Friday concert with musical friends at Theatre@41

The Hollywood Sisters: Cat Foster, left, Rachel Higgs, Helen ‘Bells’ Spencer and Henrietta Linnemann

THE Hollywood Sisters will be joined by friends for a night of musical cabaret in aid of York Mind at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, on Friday at 7.30pm.

The luscious close harmonies of the Hollywood Sisters will be complemented by guest appearances from “the finest talent York has to offer”: The Rusty Pegs, Jennie Wogan-Wells, Richard Bayton, Nicola Holliday, Matthew Clare, Connie Howcroft, John Haigh and Mark Lovell.

“Expect an evening of music, song and sprinkle of festive cheer to kick off December,” says Hollywood Sister Helen ‘Bells’ Spencer. “All profits from the evening will go to mental health charity York Mind.”

Richard Bayton, left, and John Haigh: Guest singers at the Hollywood Sisters And Friends charity concert

The Hollywood Sisters, Cat Foster, Henrietta Linnemann, Rachel Higgs and Bells, met in 2020 when they were cast together in York Musical Theatre Company’s Hooray For Hollywood, Paul Laidlaw’s nostalgic, whirlwind journey through the sounds of a bygone era from the MGM, Warner Bros, RKO and Universal studios, staged that November at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre.

“We instantly forged a special bond and after the show finished, we kept in close contact,” says Bells. “Many meet-ups over tea and cake later, the Hollywood Sisters were devised.

“In honour of the show we met on, and because we all have a shared love of vintage glamour, we kept the Hollywood part of our name and style as a group. Now we’re delighted to be welcoming back John Haigh and Richard Bayton, who were also in Hooray For Hollywood. We can’t wait to all be singing together again!

“Added to these crooners, we couldn’t be more thrilled to have guest appearances from three phenomenal female vocalists, Jennie, Connie and Nicola, and we’ll all be accompanied by the brilliant Rusty Pegs, Matthew Clare on piano and Mark Lovell on double bass.”

“We instantly forged a special bond,” says Helen ‘Bells’ Spencer, left, one that led to the Hollywood Sisters’ formation

Friday promises a relaxed cabaret-style event with the bar open throughout. “There’ll be music from across genres but always featuring gorgeous harmonies and a few festive numbers to get December started with some cheer!” says Bells.

“We also have a raffle with some amazing prizes to be won: £100 meal voucher, Tea for Two in Malton, art prints, Prosecco and much more. If you can’t make the gig but would like to buy a raffle ticket to support York Mind, please head to our just giving page and leave your email address.”

https://www.justgiving.com/page/hollywoodsisters-1700920962362?utm_medium=fundraising&utm_content=page%2Fhollywoodsisters-1700920962362&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=pfp-share

“Due to popular demand, we’ve added a few extra tickets, so grab them before they’re gone,” advises Bells. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

The poster artwork for Hollywood Sisters And Friends at Theatre@41, Monkgate on Friday night
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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Fleur Barron & Christopher Glynn, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York

Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron: Picture: Victoria Cadisch

CHRISTOPHER Glynn, known to most in this area as artistic director of the Ryedale Festival, has an uncanny knack of talent-spotting musicians with great futures ahead of them and bringing them not only to Ryedale, but also to University of York’s music department.

His latest find, already an established star on both sides of the Atlantic, is the mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron. Her programme was a combination of German – mainly Brahms – lieder alongside Spanish canciónes, with a handful of Chinese folksongs for good measure.

Homecoming was the theme of the evening, with Brahms’ three settings of poems by Klaus Growth on Heimweh (Homesickness) at the start, a poet who hailed from the same area as the composer’s family. She tapped into the nostalgia theme best in the second song, about wanting to find the sweet road back to childhood.

Folksong was more important to Brahms than any other lieder composer and seven of his folk arrangements here proved the point. The justly famous Vergebliches Ständchen (Vain Serenade) found Barron in coquettish vein, which suited the lighter side of her flexible tone. So too did Feinstliebchen…(Sweetheart, You Mustn’t Go Barefoot), where she handled the punch-lines adroitly.

Equally impressive here was Glynn’s agile treatment of the accompaniments, some of which are unusually intricate. Berg’s Four Songs, Op 2, written in his mid-twenties (1909-10), range neatly from the ultimate lullaby of Schlafen, Schlafen (Sleep, Sleep) to Warm die Lüfte’ (Warm The Breezes) – his first piece of atonal writing, and the only one of the four songs not about sleep. Both performers enjoyed breaking out into its fiery climax after their earlier restraint. Its ending was also deeply felt.

Not that her German was less than competent, but there was the feeling that Barron was much more comfortable, both with the language and the style, in her two Spanish cycles; they suited her outgoing personality.

The Five Negro Songs of the Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge were inspired by Marian Anderson’s singing of spirituals in Barcelona during the 1930s, but are also strongly overlaid by Cuban influences and the effects of colonialism. Although better known in their orchestral versions, it was good to hear them with piano alone.

The catchy lilt of Habanera Rhythm was deeply Spanish, although the implied violence of Chévere (The Dandy) needed darker tone. In the famous Canción de Cuna (Lullaby), Barron found a touching sadness in the little black boy’s innocent sleep.  Her witty singing and Glynn’s dancing piano made the final Canto negro a high-spirited treat.

Hard to summarise the Chinese songs, whose Western-style accompaniments made them sound almost Scottish. Suffice to say, a flower drum song drew laughter and applause and later several Chinese students in the hall nodded approval.

Both performers clearly revelled in the veritable mosaic of Spanishness that makes up Falla’s Siete Populares Canciónes. Barron let her hair down here, showing real flair as she dived into chest tone more than once. Glynn’s rapid staccato in the Murcian seguidilla and the changing tempos of Jota, an Aragonese dance-song, were especially memorable.

We had needed a touch more of this panache earlier in the evening from Barron, but her genuine mezzo remains a powerful instrument. I hope we shall hear her here again soon.

Review by Martin Dreyer, November 8

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REVIEW: Shrek The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ***

Brandon Lee Sears’ Donkey, Antony Lawrence’s Shrek and Joanne Clifton’s Princess Fiona en route to Duloc in Shrek The Musical

IN August 2014, Yorkshire had the honour of staging the British regional premiere of DreamWorks Theatricals’ Shrek The Musical at Leeds Grand Theatre, when 2023 Strictly Come Dancing quarter finalist Nigel Harman was the director, incidentally.

Now the latest tour plays York, with co-directors Samuel Holmes and Nick Winston at the helm and 2016 Strictly champion Joanne Clifton playing the Grand Opera House for the fourth time, after The Rocky Horror Show in 2019, preceded by Flashdance and Thoroughly Modern Millie in 2017, here revelling in the role of Princess Fiona.

Nik Briggs’s presence in Monday night’s audience was a reminder that Shrek The Musical has turned this theatre green once before: he played the not-so-jolly ogre in York Stage’s production in 2019.

Holmes and choreographer Winston oversee a 2023-2024 touring production big on video, sound and lighting design, bigger still on big numbers, and biggest of all on big, big love. All that and a particularly towering Shrek as played by the lovably lumpen, grumpy Antony Lawrence.

You will surely know the iconoclastic story and characters from the first DreamWorks animated Shrek film in 2001, but the book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire and persistently perky music by Jeanine Tesori were new to the 2008 musical.

Their songs, more forceful than overtly melodic, match the bright and bouncy tone of the trademark irreverent humour that adds playful send-ups of The Lion King and Les Miserables to the original film template of satirising and redefining the fairytale pecking order established by Grimm and Disney.

Joanne Clifton’s Princess Fiona and the Pied Piper’s tap-dancing rats performing Morning Person in Shrek The Musical

Hence the presence of myriad fairytale characters, in the manner of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, all in rebellious mood, from Georgie Buckland’s Gingy, who takes the biscuit, to Scotty Armstrong’s Big Bad Wolf, Mark D’arcy’s Pinocchio to Jonathan David Dudley’s Pied Piper.

All have their moments in song and dance, less so in dialogue, dominated instead by the big four of Lawrence’s Shrek, Clifton’s Princess Fiona, Brandon Lee Sears’ Donkey and James Gillan’s foppish Lord Farquaad.

Not forgetting a terrific turn by blues-belting Cherece Richards as the power-vocal front of the love-sick Dragon, hot on guarding Princess Fiona in the tower (as well as a second role as the Wicked Witch).

Early days in her professional career after leaving the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts this summer, keep an eye and ear on this BA Musical Theatre 2023 graduate, who more than makes the grade in Shrek, even with a huge dragon puppet design by Jimmy Grimes behind her.

Shrek The Musical’s naturally solitary, swamp-dwelling Shrek is even ruder, definitely windier, than his film version, still irascible, still wary, but nevertheless teaming up with Sears’ irrepressible Donkey to extract Clifton’s temperamental, bored, probably bipolar Princess Fiona from her tower to deliver her to Lord Farquaad for her fairytale nuptials.

Lawrence’s Shrek makes being glum a joy, his warts-and-all unconventional hero experiencing the highs and lows, the frictions and fallouts of buddy movie relationships with Sears’ jive-talking, ever-excitable Donkey, a hoofer with hooves and a Little Richard meets Prince lip.

Swamp invaders: Antony Lawrence’s Shrek in argumentative mood with Cherece Richards’ Wicked Witch and the fairytale folk in Shrek The Musical

Lawrence’s big Scottish fella warms to Clifton’s equally unconventional Princess Fiona: her favourite role, she says, one that testifies to the creed of being who you want to be, rather than living up to other people’s expectations. Clifton is the triple threat writ large: stirring singer, swish dancer and humorous actress.

The show’s humour works on two levels: sometimes pantomimic for children, especially in the fairytale characters and in its love of raucous burps and bottom burps in Shrek and Fiona’s unbeatable party-piece duet, I Think I Got You Beat.

At other times, adult, smart and savvy, such as the observation that if you look grotesque, your life is “Kafka-esque”. Then stir in that British favourite, high camp, in the fruity form of Gillan’s big-headed but diminutive Lord Farquaad, with his curtain of silken hair, Shakespearean airs and Kylie hot pants.

Philip Witcomb’s set and costume designs echo pantomime; Winston’s choreography is full of individual swagger and ensemble electricity, and if the singing is often better than the songs, Shrek The Musical’s return to York, with its big, bright wonderful fairy world, fits the festive mood of shows at this time of year.

In the words of the closing I’m A Believer, if you thought love was only true in fairy tales, Lawrence and Clifton make it a good starting place.

Shrek The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Everything’s gone green: Brandon Lee Sears’ Donkey, Joanne Clifton’s Princess Fiona and Antony Lawrence’s Shrek strut their stuff in the finale to Shrek The Musical
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Markus Birdman tops bill for Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club’s brace of Basement shows at City Screen on Saturday

Damion Larkin: Programmer and host for Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club

ESSEX comedian and stroke survivor Markus Birdman headlines Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club’s two shows on Saturday at The Basement, City Screen Picturehousen, York.

Joining him on the 5pm and 8pm bills will be Tal Davies, Hasan Al-Habib and promoter/master of ceremonies Damion Larkin.

Noted for his physicality, timing and topicality, Birdman was a 2001 finalist in the BBC New Comedy Awards, has appeared on Channel 9 TV in Australia, plays London’s Comedy Store and major UK comedy clubs and has headlined the Avalon comedy network.

He has headed up to the Edinburgh Fringe for 15 summers, presenting The Bearable Heaviness Of Nearly Not Being in 2022, and is a graffiti artist, muralist, performance poet and Glastonbury Festival poetry slam champion too.

In 2022, he suffered a stroke and ended up with a platinum heart, the subject of his Platinum Tour show. This year he was a semi-finalist on Britain’s Got Talent.

On the circuit since 2019, emerging comedian and writer Tal Davies was crowned Best Breakthrough Act at the 2021 Midlands Comedy Awards and was a Funny Women semi-finalist too, as well as being shortlisted for the BBC New Comedy Award.

BBC WritersRoom invited her to be part of the 2021 Coventry Voices programme, and the strength of her writing can be seen on stage, where she balances toe-curling anecdotes with dry observational humour, delivered with a warm stage presence and a deadpan Brummie accent.

Hasan Al-Habib was born to Iraqi parents who “decided Baghdad wasn’t dangerous enough and so moved to Birmingham”.

Starting stand-up at university, he took his 2019 show FootDarks to the Edinburgh Fringe, since when he has performed around the country and opened for comedians Ken Cheng, Fern Brady, Ahir Shah, Adam Hess and Sara Barron.

Tickets cost £19 at https://lolcomedyclubs.co.uk or £23 on the door, subject to availability.

* Laugh Out Loud’s next Basement shows will be on New Year’s Eve (31/12/2023) at 4pm and 7pm. Tickets: £25 in advance; £30 on the door, subject to availability.

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